(Thomson, Life of Dr. Owen. part 7)
I wish I might not say that our sins have put it out. We had a special
honour and ornament, such as other churches would much prize; but the
crown has fallen from our heads,--yea, may I not add, 'Woe unto us, for
we have sinned?'"
Dr Owen had only reached the confines of old age when he died; but the
wonder is, that a life of such continuous action and severe study had not
sooner burned out the lamp. It may be remarked of him, as Andrew Fuller
used to say of himself, that "he possessed a large portion of being." He
is said to have stooped considerably during the later years of his life;
but when in his full vigour, his person was tall and majestic, while
there was a singular mixture of gravity and sweetness in the expression
of his countenance. His manners were courteous; his familiar
conversation, though never deficient in gravity, was pleasantly seasoned
with wit; and he was admired by his friends for his remarkable command of
temper under the most annoying provocations, and his tranquil magnanimity
in the midst of all the changes of fortune to which, in common with all
his great Puritan contemporaries, he was exposed. "His general frame was
serious, cheerful, and discoursive,-- his expressions savouring nothing
of discontent, much of heaven and love to Christ, and saints, and all
men; which came from him so seriously and spontaneously, as if grace and
nature were in him reconciled, and but one thing." Such is the portrait
of Owen that has descended to us from those who best "knew his manner of
life;" and our regret is all the greater, that we are constrained to
receive the description in this general form, and that biography has
opened to us so few of those glimpses of his domestic and social life
which would have enabled us to "catch the living manners as they rose,"
and to fill up for ourselves the less strongly defined outlines of his
character.
Our business, however, is more with Dr Owen in his various public
relations, and it seems to be a fit conclusion of this Memoir, that we
should now attempt, in a few closing paragraphs, to express the estimate
which a review of his conduct in these relations warrants us to form of
his character. One of the most natural errors into which a biographer is
in danger of being betrayed, is that of asserting the superiority of the
individual who has been the subject of his memoir to all his
contemporaries; and it would probably require no great stretch of
ingenuity or eloquent advocacy to bring out Dr Owen as at least "primus
inter pares." In finding our way, however, to such conclusions, almost
every thing depends on the particular excellence on which we fix as our
standard of judgment; and we are persuaded that were we allowed to select
a separate excellence in each case our standard, we could bring out each
of the three great Puritans as, in his turn, the greatest. Let impressive
eloquence in the pulpit and ubiquitous activity out of it be the
standard, and all this crowned with successes truly apostolical, and must
not every preacher of his age yield the palm to Richard Baxter? Or let
our task be to search for the man in that age of intellectual giants who
was most at home in the philosophy of Christianity, whose imagination
could bear every subject he touched upwards into the sunlight, and cover
it with the splendours of the firmament, and would we not lay the crown
at the feet of the greatly good John Howe? But let the question be, who
among all the Puritans was the most remarkable for his intimate and
profound acquaintance with the truths of revelations who could shed the
greatest amount of light upon a selected portion of the Word of God,
discovering its hidden riches, unfolding its connections and harmonies,
and bringing the most abstruse doctrines of revelation to bear upon the
conduct and the life
who was the "interpreter, one amongst a thousands" or let other
excellencies that we are about to specify be chosen as the standard, and
will not the name of Dr Owen, in this case, obtain au unhesitating and
unanimous suffrage? Such a mode, therefore, of expressing our estimate is
not only invidious, but almost certain to fail, after all, in conveying a
distinct and accurate conception of the character we commend. We prefer,
therefore, to contemplate Dr Owen in his principal relations and most
prominent mental features, and to paint a portrait without fashioning an
idol.
The first excellence we have to name is one in regard to which, we are
persuaded, the modern popular estimate has fallen considerably below the
truth. We refer to the qualities of Owen as a preacher. No one who is
familiar with his printed sermons, and has marked the rich ore of
theology with which they abound, will refuse to him the praise of a great
sermon-maker; but this gift is not always fold united in the same person
with that other excellence which is equally necessary to constitute the
preacher,--the power, namely, of expressing all the sentiment and feeling
contained in the words by means of the living voice. And the general
impression seems to be, that Dr Owen was deficient in this quality, and
that his involved sentences, though easily overlooked in a composition
read in secret, must, without the accompaniments of a most perfect
delivery, have been fatal to their effect upon a public audience. It is
even supposed that his intellectual habits must have been unfavourable to
his readiness as an orator, and that wile, like Addson, he had abundance
of gold in the bank, he was frequently at a loss for ready money. But
Owen's contemporaries report far differently; and the admiring judgment
of some of them is the more to be relied on, that, as in the case of
Anthony Wood, it was given with a grudge. Their descriptions, indeed,
would lead us to conclude his eloquence was of the persuasive and
insinuating, rather than, like Baxter's, of the impassioned kind,--the
dew, and not the tempest; but in this form of eloquence he appears to
have reached great success. His amiable colleague, Mr Clarkson, speaking
of "the admirable facility with which he could discourse on any subject,"
describes him as "never at a loss for language, and better expressing
himself extempore than others with premeditation;" and retaining this
felicity of diction and mastery of his thoughts "in the presence even of
the highest persons in the nation." We have already had occasion to quote
Wood's representation of Owen's oratory, as "moving and winding the
affections of his auditory almost as he pleased;" and a writer of great
judgment and discrimination, who had often heard Owen preach, speaks of
him as "so great an ornament to the pulpit, that, for matter, manner, and
efficacy on the hearers, he represented indeed an ambassador of the Most
High, a teacher of the oracles of God. His person and deportment were so
genteel and graceful, that rendered him when present as affecting, or
more than his works and fame when absent. This advanced the lustre of his
internal excellencies, by shining through so bright a lantern."
Indeed, the sermons of Owen and his compeers, not only compel us to
form a high estimate of the preachers, but of the hearers of those times,
who could relish such strong meat, and invite its repetition. And seldom
perhaps on earth has a preacher been called to address more select
audiences than Owen. We do not now refer to the crowding multitudes that
hailed his early ministry at Fordham and Coggeshall, or to those little
secret audiences meeting in upper chambers, to whom truth was whispered
rather than proclaimed, but to those high intellects that were wont to
assemble around him at Oxford, and to those helmed warriors and heroes of
the commonwealth, who, on days of public fasting and thanksgiving, or on
high occasions of state, would stand in groups to hear the great Puritan
discourse. Many of these earnest souls were no sciolists in dignity
themselves, and had first drawn their swords to secure the liberty of
prophesying and uncontrolled freedom of worship.
We should form a very imperfect estimate of the character of Dr Owen, and
of the beneficent influence which he exerted, did we not advert to his
greatness as a man of affairs. In this respect we need have no hesitation
in asserting his superiority to all the Puritans Attached from principle
to that great party whose noble mission it was to assert and to vindicate
the rights of conscience and freedom of worship, he soon rose to be its
chief adviser on all occasions of great practical exigency. He combined
in a remarkable degree that clear perception and firm grasp of great
abstract principles, that quick discernment of character and detection of
hidden motive in others, which acts in some men with all the promptitude
and infallibility of instinct,--that fertility of resources, that
knowledge of the times for vigorous action and of the times in which to
economize strength, which, when found in great prominence and happy
combination in the politician, fit him for the high duties of
statesmanship. He was the man who, by common consent, was called to the
helm in a storm. Baxter was deficient in more than one of those qualities
which are necessary to such a post; while his ardent nature would, on
some occasions, have betrayed him into practical excesses, and at other
times his love of nice and subtle distinction would have kept him
discussing when he should have been acting;--while Howe's elevation above
the affairs of daily life, his love of solitude, which made him almost
wish even to die alone in some unfrequented wood, or on the top of some
far remote mountain, disinclined, if it did not unfit him, for the
conduct of public affairs. But Owen's singular excellence in this respect
was early manifested,--and to no eye sooner than to that of Cromwell. We
have seen him inviting his counsels on the affairs of Dublin University;
taking him with him to Scotland, not only as his chaplain, but as his
adviser in the affairs of that campaign, when he found it more difficult
to manage its theologians than to conquer its armies; and at length
intrusting to him the arduous and almost desperate enterprise of
presiding over Oxford, and raising it from its ruins. And throughout more
than thirty years of the long struggle of the Puritans and
Nonconformists, he was the counsellor and presiding mind, to whom all
looked in the hour of important action and overwhelming difficulty.
Some have accused Owen and other Nonconformists of his age as too
political for their office. But who made them such? Was it not the men
who were seeking to wrest from them their dearest civil rights, and to
make it a crime to worship God according to their consciences? With such
base ingenuity of reproach were the Huguenots of France accused of
holding secret meetings, after they had been forbidden to meet in public.
It was no small part of Owen's praise, that he saw and obeyed the
necessity of his position; and that perhaps, of all the Puritans of his
age, he was the most quick to "observe the signs of the times, and to
know what Israel ought to do." This is the estimate we should be disposed
to form from a simple retrospect of the facts of our narrative; but it
appears to have been the judgment which some of the best of Owen's
contemporaries were not slow to express. In that admirable letter to
Baxter from which we have already quoted, referring more particularly to
Owen's vice-chancellorship, the writer says, "And though his years,
piety, principles, and strait discipline, with the interest he adhered
to, affected many of the heads and students with contempt, envy, and
enmity at the first; his personal worth, obliging deportment, and
dexterity in affairs that concerned him in that station, so mastered all,
that the university grew not only content with, but proud of such a
vice-chancellor. And, indeed, such were his temper and accomplishments,
that whatever station or sort of men his lot, choice, or interest, should
place him in or among, it were no small wonder that he were not
uppermost:-- that was his proper sphere, which those with whom he was
concerned generally courted him into, and few envied or rivalled."
But the aspect in which we most frequently think of Owen, and from
which our highest estimate of him is formed, is that of a theological
writer. Even the mere material bulk of his works fills us with surprise;
and when we consider the intensely active life which Owen led, their
production strikes us as almost incredible. In Russell's editions
together with the edition of his "Exposition" by Wright, his works fill
no fewer than twenty-eight goodly octave volumes, though we almost
sympathize with the feeling that the folio form, in which many of them
originally appeared, more fitly represents their intellectual stature.
"Hew down the pyramids," says Sir James Stephen, with a feeling which
every lover of the old divinity will understand,--"Hew down the pyramids
into a range of streets! divide Niagara into a succession of water
privileges!--but let not the spirits of the mighty dead be thus evoked
from their majestic shrines to animate the dwarfish structures of our
bookselling generation."
It is only, however, when we have acquired some considerable
familiarity with the contents of these volumes, and when we remember that
on almost every one of the great controversies,--such as the Armenian,
the Socinian, the Popish, and the Episcopalian,--he has produced works
which, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, are still regarded by
unanimous consent as masterpieces on the themes on which they treat, that
we feel unhesitating confidence in placing the name of Owen among the
first names of that age of amazing intellectual achievement. In some of
his controversies he had to do with men of inferior ability, of whom it
might be said, as of some of Fuller's opponents, that "they scarcely
served him for a breakfast;" but in other controversies, such as that
with Goodwin on the perseverance of the saints, he was called to grapple
with some of the best and most accomplished men of his age. But he never
quailed before any opponent. More than one of his works put an end to the
controversy by driving his adversaries to despair; and only once--viz.,
in his rash encounter with Walton--did he retire undeniably vanquished
from the field. It is unnecessary to repeat observations that have been
made in the narrative on Owen's various works; but this seems to be the
place at which to indicate what seem to have been the most distinguishing
qualities of Owen as a theological writer.
Perhaps no better word could be found to express one of the most
striking characteristics of Owen, than that which Mackintosh has used to
describe the writings of Bentham,--exhaustiveness. He goes through his
subject "in the length thereof, and in the breadth thereof." It was his
custom to read all the works that had been written on his particular
subject,--especially the writings of opponents,--and then to path
deliberately from point to point of his theme, and bring the whole
concentrated light of Scripture to bear upon its elucidation and
establishment. He leaves nothing to be added by one who shall follow in
the same path, not even little gleanings at the corners of the field.--We
venture to describe another feature of Owen's works by the phrase,
Theological conservatism. In an age remarkable for its intellectual
excitement, which gave birth to all manner of extravagances in opinion,
like the ocean in a storm, bringing to the surface monsters, and hydras,
and chimeras dire, and then producing in due season a reaction into the
shallows of Rationalism, Owen displayed no disposition to change. There
is no writer in whose opinions throughout life there is more of
consistency and unity. There is everywhere visible strong intellect and
profound thought; but it is intellect, not sporting itself with
novelties, and expending itself in presumptuous speculation, but
reasoning out and defending what apostles taught, and feeling that there
is enough in this to fill an angel's grasp. Various causes combined to
work out this quality in Owen, especially his profound reverence for the
authority of Scripture, leading him to travel over its ample field, but
restraining him from passing beyond it; the influence of the truth upon
his own heart, as a living power writing its divine witness within him;
and also his vast learning, which enabled him to trace opinions to their
source, and to detect in that which the ignorant and half-learned looked
upon as a dazzling discovery, the resurrection of an exploded error,
whose only novelty was in its name.
Allied to this, and in part accounting for it, was what we would style
the devout Calvinism of Owen's cast of thought. Baxter and he held
substantially the same truths, their views, even when they seemed the
most divergent, differing in form and complexion more than in substance;
but still it is evident that the two great men had each his distinct and
favourite standing-point. With Baxter, the initial thought was man in
need of a great restorative system; and this led him outwards and
upwards, from step to step of the Christian salvation. The initial
thought with Owen was God in the past eternity devising a scheme of
salvation through a Mediator; which he unfolded in its wondrous
arrangements and provisions from age to age of the world, and whose
glorious results were to continue to be enjoyed for ever and ever. This
gave a comprehensiveness and an elevation to Owen's whole theology, and
accounts in part for the fact that Baxter seems greatest when bearing
upon the duties of the sinner, and calling him to repentance,--"now or
never;" while Owen comes forth in his greatest strength when instructing
and building up those who have already believed.
And this suggests another of his most remarkable excellencies,--the
power, namely, of bringing the various doctrines of the Christian system,
even the most abstruse, to bear, in the form of motive and consolation,
upon the affections and active powers of our human nature. Great as Owen
is when we see him as the gigantic polemic, putting forth his
intellectual might in "earnestly contending for the faith once delivered
unto the saints;" behave not seen him in all his greatness until, in such
practical works as his treatise on the "Mortification of Sin in
Believers," he brings the truth into contacts not so much with the errors
of the heretic, as with the corruption and deceitfulness of the human
heart. Then we have hesitated which most to admire,--his intimate
knowledge of the Word of God, or his profound acquaintance with the heart
of man, or the skill with which he brings the one into vigorous and
healing action upon the other; while all his great qualities, as the
expositor of the Scriptures, as the defender of the faith, as the
profound theologian, and as the wise practical instructor, have seemed to
manifest themselves at once in single and united greatness, in that noble
intellectual pyramid, his "Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews."
Yet some of the excellencies that we have named stand closely connected
with Owen's chief defect,--which is to be found in his manner, rather
than in his matter. His wish to exhaust his particular theme has made him
say every thing on a subject that could be said, and betrayed him into an
occasional prolixity and discursiveness, the absence of which would have
made his works far more popular, and far more useful. He wants
perspective in composition, and does not seem to know the secret of
touching on themes, without labouriously handling them. This, with an
occasionally involved and parenthetical style, has formed, as we
conceive, the chief barrier to Owen's yet wider acceptance. The sentiment
of Dr Vaughan is a just one, that had the fluency and elegance of Bates
been united to the massive thoughts of Owen, we should have had a near
approach to the perfect theological writer. But let us admit this
occasional defect; and let us even farther concede, that in other
qualities he is not equal to others of the Puritans,--that he is
surpassed by Biter in point and energy, by Flavel in tenderness, by Howe
in majesty, by both the Henries in proverb and epigram, by Bates in
beautiful similitudes;--still, where shall we find, in the theological
voters of his own or of any age, so much of the accumulated treasures of
a sanctified learning,--of the mind of God clearly elucidated and
invincibly defended,--of profound and massive thought? His works are like
a soil which is literally impregnated with gold, and in which burnished
masses of the virgin ore are sure to reward him who patiently labours in
it.
John Owen belonged to a class of men who have risen from age to age in
the church, to represent great principles, and to revive in the church
the life of God. The supreme authority of the Scriptures in all matters
of religion,--the headship of Christ,--the rights of conscience,--
religion as a thing of spirit, and not of form, resulting from the
personal belief of certain revealed truths, and infallibly manifesting
itself in a holy life,--the church as a society distinct from the world;-
-these principles, often contended for in flames and blood, were the
essence of that Puritanism which found one of its noblest examples in
Owen. Puritanism, it has been finely said, was the feeling of which
Protestantism was the argument. But even then, it was an old spirit under
a new name, which, heaven-enkindled, has ever borne the two marks of its
celestial origin, in blessing the world and being persecuted by it. It
was the spirit which breathed in the collards of Germany; in the Hussites
of Bohemia,--in those saints, who
"On the Alpine mountains cold,
Kept God's truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;"
in the Huguenots of France; and in the stern Scottish Covenanters;--and
which God has sometimes sent down since, like a benignant angel, when the
church at any time has begun to stagnate in a cold orthodoxy, to trouble
the waters of the sanctuary, that the lame might be healed. It is a
spirit which the inert orthodoxy and the superficial evangelism of the
church even now greatly needs to have breathed into it from heaven. And
the labourious and prayerful study of the writings of the Puritans might
do much to restore it. Only let the same truths be believed with the same
faith, and they will produce the same men, and accomplish the same
intellectual and moral miracles. A due appreciation of the most pressing
wants of our age, and a timely discernment of its most serious perils,
would draw from us the prayer which is said to have once escaped the lips
even of the cold and calculating Erasmus,--"O, sit anima mea cum
Puritanis Anglicanis!"
Appendix to the Life of Dr Owen
1. Epitaph on his Monument
Epitaph inscribed on the Monument of Dr Owen in Bunhill-fields
John Owen, D.D., born in the county of Oxford, the son of an eminent
minister, himself more eminent, and worthy to be enrolled among the first
divines of the age; furnished with human literature in all its kinds, and
in its highest degrees, he called forth all his knowledge in an orderly
train to serve the interests of religion, and minister in the sanctuary
of his God. In divinity, practice, polemic, and casuistical, he excelled
others, and was in all equal to himself. The Arminian, Socinian, and
Popish errors, those hydras, whose contaminated breath and deadly poison
infested the church, he, with more than Herculean labour, repulsed,
vanquished, and destroyed. The whole economy of redeeming grace, revealed
and applied by the Holy Spirit, he deeply investigated, and communicated
to others, having first felt its divine energy, according to its draught
in the holy Scriptures, transfused into his own bosom. Superior to all
terrene pursuits, he constantly cherished, and largely experienced, that
blissful communion with Deity he so admirable describes in his writings.
While on the road to heaven, his elevated mind almost comprehended its
full glories and joys. When he was consulted on cases of conscience, his
resolutions contained the wisdom of an oracle. He was a scribe every way
instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom of God. In conversation he
held up to many, in his public discourses to more, in his publications
from the press to all, who were set out for the celestial Zion, the
effulgent lamp of evangelical truth, to guide their steps to immortal
glory. While he was thus diffusing his divine light, with his own inward
sensations, and the observations of his afflicted friends, his earthly
tabernacle gradually decayed, till at length his deeply-sanctified soul,
longing for the fruition of its God, quitted the body. In younger age, a
most comely and majestic form; but in the latter stages of life,
depressed by constant infirmities, emaciated with frequent diseases, and
above all crushed under the weight of intense and unremitting studies, it
became an incommodious mansion for the vigorous exertions of the spirit
in the service of its God. He left the world on a day dreadful to the
church by the cruelties of men, but blissful to himself by the plaudits
of his God, August 24, 1683, aged 67.
2. Some letters
The following Letters embrace all the Correspondence of Dr Owen which has
been preserved, and is of any importance
To M. Du Moulin
Sir,-- I have received your strictures upon our Confession, wherein you
charge it with palpable contradiction, nonsense, enthusiasm, and false
doctrine,--that is, all the evils that can be crowded into such a
writing; and I understand, by another letter since, that you have sent
the same paper to others,--which is the sole cause of the return which I
now make to you; and I beg your pardon in telling you, that all your
instances are your own mistakes, or the mistakes of your friend, as I
shall briefly manifest to you.
First, you say there is a plain contradiction between chap. 3 art. 6,
and chap. 30 art. 2. In the first place it is said, "None but the elect
are redeemed;" but in the other it is said, "The sacrament is a memorial
of the one offering of Christ upon the cross for all." I do admire to
find this charged by you as a contradiction; for you know full well that
all our divines who maintain that the elect only were redeemed
effectually by Christ, do yet grant that Christ died for all, in the
Scripture sense of the word,--that is, some of all sorts,--and never
dreamt of any contradiction in their assertion. But your mistake is
worse; for in chap. 30 art. 2, which you refer to, there is not one word
mentioned of Christ's dying for all; but that the sacrifice which he
offered was offered once for all,--which is the expression of the
apostle, to intimate that it was but once offered, in opposition to the
frequent repetitions of the sacrifices of the Jews. And pray, if you go
on in your translation, do not fall into a mistake upon it; for in the
very close of the article it is said, "That Christ's only sacrifice was a
propitiation for the sins of all the elect." The words you urge out of 2
Pet.2:1, are not in the text: they are, by your quotation, "Denied him
that had redeemed them;" but it is, "Denied the sovereign Lord which had
bought them;"--which words have quite another sense.
Something you quote out of chap. 6 art. 6, where I think you suppose we
do not distinguish between the "reatus" and "macula" of sin; and do think
that we grant the defilement of Adam's person, and consequently of all
intermediate propagations, to be imputed unto us. Pray, sir, give me
leave to say, that I cannot but think your mind was employed about other
things when you dreamt of our being guilty of such a folly and madness;
neither is there any one word in the Confession which gives countenance
unto it. If you would throw away so much time as to read any part of my
late discourse about justification, it is not unlikely but that you would
see something of the nature of the guilt of sin, and the imputation of
it, which may give you satisfaction.
In your next instance, which you refer unto chap. 19 art. 3, by some
mistake (there being nothing to the purpose in that place), you say, "It
is presupposed that some who have attained age may be elected, and yet
have not the knowledge of Jesus Christ; which is a pure enthusiasm, and
is contrary to chap. 20 art. 2. "Why, sir! that many who are eternally
elected, and yet for some season--some less, some longer--do live without
the knowledge of Christ, until they are converted by the Word and Spirit,
is not an enthusiasm; but your exception is contrary to the whole
Scripture, contrary to the experience of all days and ages, overthrows
the work of the ministry, and is so absurd to sense, and reason, and
daily experience, that I know not what to say to it; only, I confess that
if, with some of the Armenians, you do not believe that any are elected
from eternity, or before they do actually believe, something may be
spoken to countenance your exception: but that we cannot regard, for it
was our design to oppose all their errors.
Your next instance is a plain charge of false doctrine, taken out of
chap. 11 art. 1, speaking, as you say, of the active obedience of Christ
imputed to us, which is contrary to art. 3, where it is said that Christ
acquits by his obedience in death, and not by his fulfilling of the law.
Sir, you still give me cause of some new admiration in all these
objections, and I fear you make use of some corrupt copy of our
Confession;--for we say not, as you allege, that Christ by his obedience
in death did acquit us, and not by his fulfilling of the law; but we say
that Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of
all those who are justified,--which comprehends both his active and
passive righteousness. But you add a reason, whereby you design to
disprove this doctrine of our concerning the imputation of the active
righteousness of Christ unto our justification. Why, you say, it is
contrary to reason; for that we are freed from satisfying God's justice
by being punished by death, but not from the fulfilling of the law:
therefore the fulfilling of the law by Christ is no satisfaction for us,-
-we are not freed from active obedience, but from passive obedience.
Pray, sir, do not mistake that such mistaken seasonings can give us any
occasion to change our judgments in an article of truth of this
importance. When you shall have been pleased to read my book of
Justification, and have answered solidly what I have written upon this
subject, I will tell you more of my mind. In the meantime I tell you, we
are by the death of Christ freed from all sufferings as they are purely
penal, and the effect of the curse, though they spring out of that root;
only, sir, you and I know full well that we are not freed from pains,
afflictions, and death itself,--which had never been, had they not
proceeded from the curse of the law. And so, sir, by the obedience of
Christ we are freed from obedience to the law, as to justification by the
works thereof. We are no more obliged to obey the law in order to
justification than we are obliged to undergo the penalties of the law to
answer its curse. But these things have been fully debated elsewhere.
In the last place, your friend wishes it could be avoided, and declined
to speak any thing about universal grace, for that it would raise some or
most divines against it. I judge myself beholden to your friend for the
advice, which I presume he judges to be good and wholesome; but I beg
your pardon that I cannot comply with it, although I shall not reflect
with any severity upon them who are of another judgment; and, to tell you
the truth, the immethodical new method introduced to give countenance to
universal grace, is, in my judgment, suited to draw us off from all due
conceptions concerning the grace of God in Jesus Christ; which I shall
not now stay to demonstrate, though I will not decline the undertaking of
it, if God gives me strength, at any time. And I do wonder to hear you
say that many, if not most divines, will rise against it, who have
published in print that there were but two in England that were of that
opinion, and have strenuously opposed it yourself. How things are in
France, I know not; but at Geneva, in Holland, in Switzerland, in all the
Protestant churches of Germany, I do know that this universal grace is
exploded. Sir, I shall trouble you no farther. I pray be pleased to
accept of my desire to undeceive you in those things, wherein either a
corrupt copy of our Confession or the reasonings of other men have given
you so many mistaken conceptions about our Confession.--I am, Sir, yours,
J. Owen
To the Lady Hartopp
Dear Madam,--Every work of God is good; the Holy One in the midst of us
will do no iniquity; and all things shall work together for good unto
them that love him, even those things which at present are not joyous,
but grievous; only his time is to be waited for, and his way submitted
unto, that we seem not to be displeased in our hearts that he is Lord
over us. Your dear infant is in the eternal enjoyment of the fruits of
all our prayers; for the covenant of God is ordered in all things, and
sure. We shall go to her; she shall not return to us. Happy she was in
this above us, that she had so speedy an issue of sin and misery, being
born only to exercise your faith and patience, and to glorify God's grace
in her eternal blessedness. My trouble would be great on the account of
my absence at this time from you both, but that this also is the Lord's
doing; and I know my own uselessness wherever I am. But this I will beg
of God for you both that you may not faint in this day of trial,--that
you may have a clear view of those spiritual and temporal mercies
wherewith you are yet intrusted (all undeserved),--that sorrow of the
world may not so overtake your hearts as to disenable to any duties, to
grieve the Spirit, to prejudice your lives; for it tends to death. God in
Christ will be better to you than ten children, and will so preserve your
remnant, and to add to them, as shall be for his glory and your comfort.
Only consider that sorrow in this case is no duty, it is an effect of
sin, whose cure by grace we should endeavour. Shall I say, Be cheerful? I
know I may. God help you to honour grace and mercy in a compliance
therewith. My heart is with you, my prayers shall be for you, and I am,
dear madam, your most affectionate friend and unworthy pastor,
J. Owen
To Mrs Polhill
Dear Madam,--The trouble expressed in yours is a great addition to
mine; the sovereignty of divine wisdom and grace is all that I have at
this day to retreat unto; God direct you thereunto also, and you will
find rest and peace. It adds to my trouble that I cannot possibly come
down to you this week. Nothing but engaged duty could keep me from you
one hour: yet I am conscious how little I can contribute to your guidance
in this storm, or your satisfaction. Christ is your pilot; and however
the vessel if tossed whilst he seems to sleep, he will arise and rebuke
these winds and waves in his own time. I have done it, and yet shall
farther wrestle with God for you, according to the strength he is pleased
to communicate. Little it is which at this distance I can mind you of;
yet some few things are necessary. Sorrow not too much for the dead: she
(continued in part 8...)
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